Beating Depression

With Professor Gordon Parker and former Minister Frank Sartor

Celebrating 10 years of a the Black Dog Institute last week, I was reminded of how much we owe to medical professionals. Sufferers of bi-polar disease went on stage and testified to the help they’d received from Professor Gordon Parker, the Institute’s Executive Director. In one case, a survivor said he owed his life to him.

Former Minister Frank Sartor was there, justifiably proud of his work in this area, as was the State Governor Marie Bashir, herself a psychiatrist.

Gordon Parker in his address said the main challenge with sufferers from depression was to offer them hope. Hope, not happiness, was the starting point.

His new book, A Piece of My Mind, looks like it answers any questions on psychiatry a layperson might have. I will interrogate closely anything it says about the excessive prescription of drugs by psychiatrists (see my blogs on this subject).